Role-model Essay A Winner For Young Writer

Prize Is Appearance By Heat Star

Students screamed and pounded the floor when Alonzo Mourning entered the auditorium at Crystal Lake Middle School on Monday.

The children greeted the Miami Heat center like a returning hero, but the student responsible for getting Mourning to come to the school did not know who he was until two months ago.

"Not until this happened," said Alicia Delisser-Nuttall, 13, who won a day with Mourning for writing the winning essay, "My Favorite Role Model," in a contest sponsored by the Heat.

Delisser-Nuttall, whose favorite sport is ice-skating, said she entered the contest not because of the prize - a day with Mourning - but because she wants to be a writer, like her mother.

"My role model is someone who is caring, unique and intelligent, all rolled into one," Delisser-Nuttall wrote. "She is my mother, Fulvia Delisser-Nuttall."

The eighth grader's language arts teacher, Susan Santy, said Delisser-Nuttall won another essay contest on the same subject with essentially the same essay. Santy said that she gives her students extra credit for entering writing contests and that Delisser-Nuttall is an A student.

But Santy said Delisser-Nuttall "didn't have a clue" who Mourning was or know anything about basketball until she won the Heat contest. Delisser-Nuttall was recognized as the winner at a Heat game in early April. Since then, she has been to two other Heat games.

Her mother grew up in "soccer country," England, but has become a Heat fan since her daughter won the team's essay contest. "I am a basketball fan now," she said.

Mourning, who toured the school Monday, told the language arts class that Delisser-Nuttall's essay moved him.

"I could relate to it because one of the biggest role models in my life was my mother as well," Mourning said.

Mourning told the students to set goals and "stay focused," and also to be realistic about their aspirations. Mourning said that only a few, if any, of them would grow up to become professional basketball players.

"But just because you can't become a pro basketball player doesn't mean you can't succeed," Mourning told the class. "You might not know it now, but you all are going to be running the country some day. And I'm gonna be an old man in a wheelchair, just sitting there watching you do it."

Mourning said he, like other athletes, has flaws.

"I know you might look at me as a role model, but I'm human, I make mistakes," Mourning said.

A few minutes later, a student asked him about the Heat's losing series with the Chicago Bulls in the NBA playoffs. Mourning said he was on a "high" when the team won the playoff berth but quickly got deflated.

"It left a bitter taste in my mouth because we lost to our nemesis," Mourning said of the Bulls. "They're the team we most want to be like, the team we emulate."

Delisser-Nuttall's role-model mother has published poetry and fiction and reads to her children every night.

"She says, `Read anything, from Shakespeare to the Bible,'" Delisser-Nuttall wrote in her essay. "As I grow up, I hope to have children someday and I hope to raise them in the same fashion my mother raised me."